Drunk in its stale airFor two hundred years.Fettered in mind and body,The soul, the safe escape

To let me breathe the criesOf my heart singingTears of mel-an-choly.

The tears flow free todayWashing the stains of bloodAnd sweat in brotherhood.

Raise the curtain then an'Let the world look inOn this promised land --We breathe free today.... almost.

--- Arshad M. Khan

We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.--- Native American proverb

March 16, 2012

Mr. President: The nascent Afghan peace talks are over before they started. Even Mr. Karzai has pulled out. The Taliban, never really interested, are packing their bags. Come to think of it, the last substantial talks were with a con-artist cobbler claiming to be Taliban, who lived the good life for a while until he was found out. The so-called weak, dispirited Taliban of the military brass, self-serving politicians and compliant media are preparing for the fighting season as mountain passes shed their snow.

The immediate excuse for the bust-up is the massacre of 16 sleeping villagers, including nine children, by a berserk U.S. soldier. This was his fourth tour of duty. So we are short of soldiers and require the ones we have to serve again and again on combat tours of duty. Worth asking ... how many senators and congressmen have sons serving in combat battalions? Answer ... virtually none. And in our present culture no white feathers, and certainly no honor bound sense of service for these stalwarts.

Here is a challenge to every Washington, D.C. politician. How would you like to spend a month , just one month, as an embed at a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan taking your turn going out on Humvee patrols? They are welcome to decline the challenge but then are required to wear a white feather on their lapel for the course of our "war on terror".

The 'emo' are apparently punk rockers. But in present day Iraq, it has become a term symbolizing the non-conformist lifestyle, especially homosexual. A recent spate of attacks (by ostensibly government aided gangs ) have killed 58 young men in the last month.

Women, too, no longer enjoy the freedoms of the past. Whatever else could be said (and there was plenty) of the Saddam, and Gaddafi, regimes, their left-leaning socialist philosophy offered equal rights for women. And Saddam did not target gays or pop music fans; his ire was reserved for regime critics or opponents. The narrow vision of the replacement regimes have cast back women's rights at least a a half-century.

Helicopters continue to drop out of the sky in Afghanistan -- this time killing twelve Turkish soldiers. The latter must have the lowest profile of all the NATO forces for almost no one had heard of them being there. No doubt, a month or two later, there will be a brief admission the helicopter came under enemy fire. Almost always, there is.